Fen Mengbo graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Spanning a range of media from painting to cd-roms, Mengbo's work addresses subject matter as intensely personal as My Private Album, a cd-rom documenting several generations of his family, as well as work that verges on social/political critiques, exemplified in the cd-rom installation "Taking Mount Doom by Strategy", which melded themes of violence, power and heroicism from the popular video game Doom with the revolutionary opera, "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy". Much of Mengbo's work since the early 90s has been variously influenced by the style, content, or cultural implications of video games, which greatly interested him as an adolescent.
His interactive installation My Private Album was shown in Documenta X in 1997, and video game modification installation Q4U (produced by The Renaissance Society, based on Quake III Arena) was shown in Documenta 11 in 2002. Ah_Q is a dancing-pad version of Q4U which won the Award of Distinction of Interactive Art, Prix Ars Electronica, 2004.
> awp.diaart.org/mengbo
Appearances:
> CTM.10 > MYTHS OF THE NEAR FUTURE